Old nog and warm beer
This is going to be an unconventional holiday season, but one tradition I’m keeping alive is making a big batch of boozy eggnog. In normal years, I’ll make this in November and give it a month or so to age in the bottle before cracking it open at my holiday cocktail party. This year I’ve had to take the party on the road, splitting the batch into smaller bottles and biking them around town to spread a little cheer. Over at Inside Hook, I wrote about the pleasures and perils (mostly pleasures) of aging eggnog, along with illustrations and a recipe from my friend Andrew Bohrer.
Although the cocktail party isn’t happening, there is one part of it that’s actually really well-suited for adapting to the Zoom format. For the past few years the party has included a flask exchange in which every guest brings an unlabeled flask filled with a spirit of their choice, as long as it’s something they’d genuinely enjoy drinking on a winter walk through the woods. We then randomly exchange them, with the recipients attempting to guess what they’ve been given. We’ve found that blind tasting in front of a group can be quite humbling! I’ll confess to mistaking a potent brandy for a pot still rum at last year’s party. This year we’re exchanging the flasks in advance, then showing off our refined palates or, more likely, embarrassing ourselves on a group Zoom call next week. If your friends include a few spirits lovers, it’s a fun thing to try.
Recommended reading
I’m glad to see Josh Barro writing again after a brief break, rejoining the team at Business Insider. Like Josh, I’m optimistic about 2021, especially following the difficult months ahead in the short-term while we contend with the winter COVID wave, the rollout of vaccines, and the end of the Trump presidency. Read Josh’s piece on why things are looking up.
It’s a triumph of science that vaccines for COVID are already in use within a year of the virus’s emergence, but here’s an even more astonishing fact: Moderna’s vaccine was designed back in January. How much suffering and death could have been avoided had we accelerated testing and production even further? And can we invest now to have mRNA vaccines in waiting for the next pandemic? David Wallace-Wells explores these questions for New York Magazine.
We’re almost done with Donald Trump, but not yet. If you haven’t read Zeynep Tufekci’s excellent piece on the danger of dismissing the real, albeit inept, effort to steal the election, I recommend it. See also: Cathy Young on how this goes far beyond previous attacks on the legitimacy of US elections. Written nearly a month ago, it’s only become more relevant in the time since.
Zoom has been incredibly useful during the pandemic, but it doesn’t come close to replicating the experience of an actual party. Can “proximity chat” that facilitates mingling and breaking off into small groups do a better job? I haven’t tried apps like Gather yet, but after reading this exploration by Gretchen McCulloch, I’m interested to give them a try.
You may recognize Jen Agg from the infamous scene in which she poured a bone luge for Anthony Bourdain (an incident she’s rather ambivalent about, for what it’s worth). The owner of five restaurants in Toronto, she writes about an especially difficult year and what those of us in hospitality have lost: “The memory of a bustling dining room – the music just shy of too loud, the lights just sparkling enough to twinkle everyone’s eyes – is almost physically painful. For me, my restaurants are where I draw much of my energy, stolen from people I have the gall to charge for the privileges I gain.”
Social distancing
To listen: If you know me at all, you know I’m excited about the new Belle and Sebastian live album released on Friday, “What to Look for in Summer”. According to my Spotify recap, I spent more than 49 hours listening to Belle and Sebastian this year, and I regret none of it. Fans might enjoy this Rolling Stone interview with Stuart Murdoch on the evolution of the band. (The Postal Service also released a new live album, so it’s been a nostalgic couple weeks for us early 2000s baristas.)
To read: After the election, I needed a break from the political and picked up Adam Nicolson’s 2017 book The Seabird’s Cry, a lovingly informative look into the lives of ten different seabirds. It’s exceptionally good nature writing.
To gift: If you’re doing some last minute Christmas shopping, it’s not too late to pick up this stirred cocktail set from Portland company Bull in China. It’s 15% off through the 17th with code “LIQUIDITYPREF”.
To drink: I was excited to learn today that Portland is getting an outdoor bar serving mulled ale this holiday season. Everybody knows about mulled wine and mulled cider, but they rarely think about giving beer the same treatment. Yet warm beer has a long history. Back when I was writing my book about beer cocktails, I ended up uncovering so many worthwhile recipes for them that I devoted an entire chapter to the topic. For the Atlantic a few years ago, I wrote about some of the weird medical beliefs that led people to believe that it’s more healthful to drink one’s beer warm.
If you’d like to dive into making warm beer drinks, well, buy my book! But as a preview, here’s how to make a simple mulled ale. The recipe is based on one recounted by Cedric Dickens, great-grandson of Charles. The key is to use a very malty beer, such as an English winter ale. Anything hoppy will taste extra bitter when you heat it up; sweet, malty notes are what you want to accentuate. Samuel Smith’s Winter Welcome is one of my go-to choices for this, but if you can find something even richer, so much the better.
12 oz malty ale
1 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar, to taste
pinches of winter spices (clove, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc.)
2 oz cognac
thin orange wheel
Heat your ale on the stove, not to boiling but to a warm drinking temperature (140 F/60 C or higher). Add the spices and sugar. Pour into a warmed mug with the cognac and orange. You could also split this into two mugs to share.
One other tip: Mulled ale can be a great winter party drink. To serve it for a group, I batch it into large bottles and put them in a sous vide circulator to keep them at drinking temperature. Just be sure to keep the caps ajar to release any pressure and ensure the bottles stay upright to prevent spillage.
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